


Steady

by Prince_Hamlet



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Electrocution, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Consensual Haircuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 00:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16336502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prince_Hamlet/pseuds/Prince_Hamlet
Summary: Peter Nureyev definitely did not originally factor into Miasma's plans.Juno Steel definitely did not originally play along with Miasma's little card game.Miasma definitely can adapt to stubborn, self-sacrificing detectives, especially when she has something he does care about.





	Steady

The first morning in the tomb, they were awoken by two attendants roughly pulling Juno out of his bedroll and tossing a nutrition bar onto Nureyev’s. Before either could protest, they were out the door, the attendants pulling a stumbling, bleary-eyed Juno by his elbows.

“Sorry fellas, I don’t do double dates, and it seems you’ve left my partner behind,” said Juno, trying to both pull himself from their grip and keep pace with their long strides. He planted his feet, tried to lean back and brace himself. “I’m not going anywhere where I can’t see what you’re doing to him.”

The attendants said nothing from behind their impassive masks, and the one on his left punched him in the gut while the one on his right switched their grip on his arm and put their free hand on the back of his neck, squeezing just tight enough to threaten. Juno didn’t fully recover his breath until they traversed a few more winding halls and dumped him into a chair in another room, clicking its restraints into place. As he wheezed, he took in the room. It was probably once similar to the room that served as his cell, but it now held a desk covered by equipment and screens, with a tangled mess of wires leading to other, larger pieces of equipment in other parts of the room. The chair he was in had mild restraints- cuffs keeping his ankles to the chair legs and his wrists to the armrests. Across from him was a window into what looked like a police interrogation room with a table and a chair. From where he was sitting he couldn’t see the table, just the very top of the chair.

All in all, he’d been tied up in worse places. One of the attendants left the room while the other moved equipment around behind him.

“Whatcha doing back there?” Juno asked, as playfully as possible while still half winded. No response. He craned his head to try to see what was happening to no avail.

He didn’t really start to panic until the buzzing noise started.

“Hey, what are you—” He was cut off by the attendant putting a hand on his forehead and bringing the clippers to the back of his head. Juno jerked away, trying to avoid the attendant’s grip on his head. After a brief struggle, the attendant put a strong gloved hand around his mouth and slammed his head back into the metal chair. He couldn’t do anything but breathe heavily and blink away stars as the attendant shaved his head. It was humiliating, watching his hair fall to the ground, helpless. Miasma entered and started booting up various screens and machines just as his impromptu haircut was finished. 

He tried to think of a quip when the attendant let him go, but all he could do was stare at the soft, dark curls littering the ground around him. He’d never thought himself particularly vain, but something about having his hair stripped away from him hit him much harder than everything else they’d already taken from him.

The attendant started putting electrodes on his head. He didn’t bother to struggle. He kept his eyes on the ground.

“Juno Steel.” 

He didn’t respond, and was slapped for it.

When he recovered, Miasma is staring with that intense, impassive glare.

“One of my attendants is in the other room.” She gestured to the window to the interrogation-like room. The second attendant was sitting at the chair, messing with something on the table. “They have a deck of cards with simple shapes and colors.” The attendant briefly held up a few cards—they looked like something from a preschool. “They will flip the cards one at a time and you will tell me what’s on them.”

“How? I can’t see the cards from here.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Juno Steel. You swallowed my little red pill. I know that you can read minds. You did it yesterday, didn’t you?”

He had. Considering how hard it was and how much it hurt, he was starting to think he wouldn't like this game.

“Attendant, flip the first card. Juno Steel, tell me what it is.”

Miasma was bad enough without being able to read minds. He’d have to stall until they could find a way out. He had one advantage—she needed him alive and well.

“And what if I want to keep my thoughts to myself?”

Miasma sighed, somewhere between disappointed and angry. She nodded to the attendant, who punched him in the stomach again. Juno wheezed and laughed.

“Is that it? Can’t risk damaging the goods, right Miasma?”

Ok, that face was definitely angry. 

“I would rather do this the easy way Juno Steel, but there is a hard way.”

“Prove it.”

She sent a shock through the electrodes on his head. He felt his muscles twitch and tasted the metal tang of blood in his mouth.

“Tell me the card, Juno Steel.”

“No.”

Another shock, this one worse. It made black spots appear in front of his eyes, and he could now feel the blood trickling down the back of his throat.

“If you’ve been keeping as close an eye on me as you’ve said,” he hoarsely panted out, “you should know you’ll get nowhere. I’m told I can be pretty stubborn.” 

To her credit, she did try. But it became pretty clear that he wouldn’t comply, no matter how high she set the voltage or how close he got to passing out. Through the haze of pain that seemed to come from his very bones, Juno heard Miasma’s final remark.

“You may not care about getting yourself hurt,” she said thoughtfully, “but there’s one thing here you do care about.”

Right when he figured out what she meant she hit the button again and he blacked out.

 

Peter spent his free time examining the intricate carvings on the walls in their makeshift cell. The writing was interesting. Hard to tell if it was phonetic or symbolic, religious or practical. Peter spotted the bloodstained cloth he’d used to wipe away Juno’s blood out of the corner of his eye and moved on to a new section. This one seemed was certainly more like pictures, but the nature of the carvings made it difficult to discern if it was art or hieroglyphics. It seemed to depict two figures—assumedly Martians—escorting a third to what could be the coffin in the chamber. Just like how the attendants had entered this morning, taking Juno, and Peter just sat there, he didn’t stop them, he let them take Juno. He looked harder at the smaller writing underneath. Of course, archeologists have hotly debated if Martian writing was pictorial or phonetic, or if they even had a unified written language like Solaris. It’s quite possible that some found examples of Martian writing are ancient forms of the language used for religious purposes, like Latin or Sanskrit or English. Peter took a step back and nearly slipped on Juno’s bedroll. Juno had looked so troubled, even when asleep. Peter wondered where he was now, if he was alright, if he was alive. He tore his eyes away from the bedroll and tried to refocus on the writing.

The door opened, and an unconscious Juno was unceremoniously dropped on the floor, along with more nutrition bars and another water bottle.

“Juno!” Peter immediately forgot everything about ancient Martians or their writing and dropped to his knees next to Juno. God, he looked terrible. His beautiful, soft hair had been shaved off and blood dripped from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Peter hovered over him for a moment, afraid to touch and find him still. He fumbled for the pulse on Juno’s wrist, but couldn’t keep his hands steady enough. For some reason they were shaking. He pressed his head to Juno’s chest instead, and only dared to breathe when he heard the quiet but steady beat of Juno’s heart. He breathed a sigh of relief and rested his forehead on Juno’s chest, his hands on Juno’s arms, feeling the warmth of Juno’s body. He got up to tear a new strip from his jacket’s lining and dampen it with water from the bottle. He very carefully knelt and positioned himself with Juno’s head in his lap and cleaned away the blood. He brushed his other hand along the soft, short hairs of the fresh buzzcut. 

It was so cruel, to take that perfect hair, that messy mop of tight curls that complimented the dark, deep brown of his eyes. The first time they’d met, Peter thought about how easy it would be to pretend to seduce such a handsome lady, and by that end of the night all he wanted was to run his hand through those curls until the heat death of the universe. Without his hair, Juno looked so small, the soft planes of his face looking gaunt in the harsh light from the work lamp in the corner. Peter was so focused on the heavy, protective feeling in his chest that he nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand clamped onto his wrist.

Juno wrenched Peter’s hand away as he rolled off his lap, clearly panicking. He tried and failed to stand, and ended up on his knees, one hand braced on the wall and the other clutching his head.  
“Juno! Juno it’s alright, it’s just me,” Peter said, hands outstretched, palms up. Juno flung his arm out and smacked Peter’s hands away.

“Don’t touch me,” Juno growled, voice rough. Peter leaned back, not quite putting his hands down.

“Alright. Why don’t you lie down, Juno, you look a little worse for wear.” He tried to keep his tone light, like Juno had just bumped his head instead of being tortured by a literal mad scientist.

“No, I need to—” He stumbled up, still braced on the wall, and started searching feverishly, as if there might be a hidden pressure panel that would reveal a secret tunnel in the walls of their cell. “We need to get out of here, Nureyev, now.”

“Juno, I’m afraid that’s impossible, please, come sit down.”

“I can’t. She’s gonna— I didn’t do what she asked—She’s going to use you against me—stupid, I should’ve known…”

Peter followed Juno’s pacing nervously, just short of reaching out, trying to anticipate if he’d fall. “Juno, you know I would never do anything to hurt you, no matter what she did to me—” Juno whirled around, nearly knocking into him and reflexively grabbing his upper arm for support. Peter grabbed his elbow, trying to support him.

“No—What? No, Nureyev, she’s going to hurt you. She’s going to torture you unless I do what she asks.”

Oh. “Oh,” said Peter, other hand hovering over Juno’s shoulder, unsure if he was allowed. Juno let go and leaned against the wall. Peter couldn’t help but miss the tight, frenzied grip on his arm. Juno slid down the wall, head in his hands.

“She’s going to hurt you, and it’s my fault.” Peter knelt next to him, unsure of how to proceed. Juno was an enigma. First it he seemed to regret turning Peter in, and then he was angry and uncooperative at the casino, and then he put a gun to his own head, and now he wouldn’t make eye contact. His moods were unpredictable. The only thing constant was his self-hating nature.  
“Juno, it’s alright.” No answer. “Really, I can take a few hits, and soon enough we will make our escape.”

“I can’t let you do that.” It sounded final, like shaking hands unable to find a pulse.

“What does she want you to do?” Peter asked. Juno winced, then looked away, then groaned. Peter waited patiently.

“She wants me to… read minds.”

“…Can you?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “That Martian pill I swallowed, I didn’t hear anything after I got out of the hospital, and I thought that was it, but…”

“But its back,” Peter finished, making connections. “And it’s how you know about the cigarette, and the assassin, and that Miasma needed you.” Juno grimaced, and the second part of that revelation clicked into place. “And it hurts you, makes you bleed.”

Juno didn’t answer, but his face was an open book. Peter had never met anyone with their feelings so close to the surface. At least, no one that he’d bothered to care about.

“Well then,” Peter said, brighter than he felt, “we’ll share. I’ll take some hits, you’ll take some hits, and we’ll get out of here with just a few scars between us, hm?”

Juno shook his head, “This is my fault, I won’t let you take the fall. I’ll just do what she wants, and maybe she’ll let you go.”

“Really, Juno, I can take care of myself,” Peter admonished. “I know my own limits, and if I can take some of the pressure off you—” 

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m not giving you a choice.” Juno’s deep, dark eyes flicked to Peter’s face. A single drop of blood trickled from his nose. Understanding washed over his face.  
“You thought I was dead?” he whispered.

Peter felt stripped bare, like Juno had broken down his every wall, pulled out his heart, and put it there on his sleeve. He felt caught off guard, just caught, even. 

Mind reading or not, it was generally how looking into those eyes made him feel. 

“If I have to get hurt to be in that room with you and make sure you come back here at the end of the night, then so be it,” Peter said. He tried to be short, clipped, tried to look more confident than the waver in his voice. 

Juno looked like he’d been punched, head turned away and eyes flicking around the room like he was trying to find an escape. His feelings were all right there, on his face and in his eyes, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking, whether that despair was because he felt that same sort of protective desperation, or because he didn’t love Peter the same, or because he didn’t believe it, didn’t trust Peter, even after all that.

“Juno.” Peter reached forward, hesitantly. He wanted to put his hand on Juno’s cheek, to pull him in close and keep him there. He settled for resting his hand on Juno’s shoulder, relieved he didn’t pull away. “You saved my life. If it weren’t for you I would be under a layer of sand in the middle of the desert with a laser burn through my heart. Please let me return the favor.”

“I don’t deserve it.” Juno choked out. 

“Oh, Juno.” Peter curled his hand behind Juno’s neck, put his other hand on Juno’s hip, and tugged him with the gentleness one would handle a priceless artifact. Juno crashed into him, head buried in his neck, arms wrapped around him desperately, trying to close any gap between them. Peter hauled Juno up onto his lap, wrapped an arm around his waist and turned them so his back was against the wall. Juno was shaking, kneeling over Peter’s legs and trying to bury himself in Peter’s chest. Peter tried to commit every detail of this moment to memory: Juno’s hands fisted in his shirt, Juno’s forehead pressed into his collarbone, the weight of him, the smell of him. He pressed his lips to the side of Juno’s head and tried to will him to understand exactly how worthy he was. And then Juno was crashing his lips into Peter’s, close and warm and impossibly soft. It was desperate, and then it was tender, and then slow and sweet. Peter held on until exhaustion took Juno, and then placed him on his bedroll. He fell asleep with his hand over Juno’s heart, feeling that quiet but steady beat through his palm.

The next morning, the attendants came to their cell and took them both.

And Peter did what he had to to make sure both of them were delivered back to their cell at the end of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post on AO3! I'm going to be posting fics from my tumblr over here over the next few days, so stay tuned. If you want to read them before that, my tumblr is prince-hamlet.tumblr.com


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